How to properly clean & re-season cast iron after cooking

alright so let's clean up this cast-iron pan you can see that there's a little bit of buildup in the bottom from our bacon pieces so what we're going to do is make sure that it's cool to the touch warm is okay you don't want it hot because if you run it under the water it might crack so just make sure that it's nice and cool to the touch turn our water on we want a slightly warmer than a lukewarm water just go ahead and rinse our pan out to begin with here we don't want to use hot water because that could expand the metal and actually soak some of the water up into the pan and start to arrest it so that's why I want to use a medium lukewarm medium water bed and give it a rub out with your fingers and try to break up anything that you can that rinse most of it out you can still see there's a little bit on the bottom here so we're going to use our lodge cast-iron scraper and these come in a two-pack from lodge and they work really well and they don't damage the surface at all so just go ahead and after you get your initial rinse done go ahead and use your scraper give it a scrape there and this works for anything that you just previously cooked look at that just comes right off this is already after we have a good seasoning start to build up on the on the pan here fill around for any hard surface areas or edges that you might need to get better rinse it out again and you can feel surprisingly well with your fingers if there's anything else that needs to be scraped off so just give it a nice fill around the whole surface there's something right there remember also when we're cleaning cast iron that we don't want to use any soap products water is fine water and the scraper work perfectly well the soap products will start to deteriorate your nonstick seasoning and the good flavor that's building up in your pans also cast iron becomes sterile and pretty much is self cleaned from any previous cooking that you might have done in it if you clean it out with this rinse method and reese's a method and then when you when it comes up to cooking temperature it actually sterilizes itself do a nice good rinse as you're in Snitch kind of feel around one last time make sure that everything feels smooth nothing stuck on there and we should be pretty good the surface area still feels really smooth that's great go ahead and give it a wipe down with your towel try to wipe up as much moisture as you can and then we're going to throw this back on to the fire and heat it up to help evaporate any extra moisture that's left on the pan that'll ensure there's no moisture that gets trapped that might cause rust fill smooth throw it back on the burner here and it might look like it's dirty but that's just some seasoning building up in there all right back on the burner we're just going to let it heat up for a little while we want all that moisture to come out and we also want to open up the metal one of my pans ready to be seasoned I usually just feel the handle if you can feel heat coming into that handle then you're good turn your heat off get your seasoning oil out and put it on your I use a dedicated rag for my seasoning oil squeeze a little bit on there that's good just to recoat this and be careful use your pot handle holder and just give it a good wipe now be really careful with your fingers because this metal is hot make sure to wipe down and get all surfaces evenly and we don't want it an excess amount of oil on here we just want to light coating just to cover it looks good nice beautiful black again flip it over don't forget the bottom and of course your side areas and your handle and you want to be careful this a lot it is hot I've gotten quite a number of blisters from doing this but it's worth it so there we go cleaned and lightly oiled ready to cook again just give it another wipe down to get any excess of oil out and as the pan cools it will soak the oil back into the pores and help to build up your seasoning and nonstick status there we go a nice black slick cut surface again beautiful alright pans good to go thanks a lot

Channel: Cooking With Cast Iron

Views: 2,027,240

Keywords: cast iron, cleaning, correct way, re season, beginners, Food, Cooking, After, Kitchen, skillet, lodge, camp chef, healthy, alternative, teflon, conditioner, how to

Id: xwCeW5SYJNs

Length: 6min 4sec (364 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 15 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/crookymcshankshanks8]

If I cared for all my appliances to this extent I'd have to quit my job

[u/MacacoMonkey]

I was watching this and thinking "I have to cross post it to unintentional asmr". Then I realized I was on unintentional asmr :D

[u/PappaDeej]

Okay.... so I’m on the cast iron subreddit as well and I thought this was a post over there.